It’s been a strange couple of weeks.

I was thinking this yesterday morning as I was standing in my backyard, at 7am, in the pouring rain wearing a big parka, yoga pants and snow boots (it was muddy and they double as rain boots). I was trying to haul a GIGANTIC tree limb across the yard. The unsightly branch had graced our backyard for, oh, a couple of months. But I needed to get it back to the woods asap, because in a few short hours we’d be showing our house to a prospective buyer. Something that, a week ago, I had no idea we’d be doing.

It all started when we got wind of the fact that another house we’ve always admired was up for sale. We saw it, we love it…floral wallpaper and all. We want to buy it. We want our kids to grow up in it. We want them to ride bikes and learn to roller skate and get skinned knees in the driveway. So as I write, we are essentially trying to sell our house in a week or so, so that we can snag our “forever house” before it hits the market. Slightly crazy, but stranger things have happened.

In the midst of our turbo-house-selling-snowballs-chance plan, my husband was presented with the opportunity for us to move across the pond to London for a special assignment. Wow. Something pre-kids we would have leapt at. We ponder it. We realize we don’t even have valid passports anymore. We wonder if our kids would get British accents. We decide against it, for now.

And then, on my computer screen one morning, I get an email from an old college friend, or more accurately, a former flame. We haven’t talked in 15 years. We exchange emails where we sum up the last decade and a half of our happy and fulfilled lives in a few paragraphs. We highlight the jobs, the moves, the births of kids, and who we still keep in touch with. And I decide to take the opportunity, one that I never thought I would have, to apologize for things that were and weren’t said…15 years ago.

So as I’m standing in the pouring rain yesterday gripping the trunk of the tree limb and pulling as hard as I can to move that darn thing, I’m thinking,

This is what it’s all about.

Life is just unbelievably cool sometimes. It’s pretty amazing to wake up one day, have your coffee, and by dinner time you’re pondering a huge change. On those days, you may suddenly get a real chance to go for something you’ve always wanted, or someone calls you into their office and drops a new opportunity in your lap, or, you may simply get an unexpected chance to make amends.

Just when you think you’re hitting your stride and everything is status quo, BAM.

Life gives you the chance to go out on a limb.

And no matter what the outcome, that’s when you really start living.